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Gamecube Guts
CamelTrader writes: "I was runnin around the net looking for info on dreamcast controller hacks and I found this sweet site that exposes the guts of a gamecube. The pics are here. Take a gander at the rest of the GamesX site if you are into hardware hacking, its very cool."
I saw this had an ATI chip in it, maybe there is some way to hook it to a CRT?
What about a Harddrive like that one webstation that came out from Circuit City a few years ago.
Or maybe a keyboard? I've always hated game controllers, they never fit my hands right.
i was more interested in the "dreamcast controller hacks" aspect of the post.
what exactly is available and what where you looking for?
dreamcast is now only 80 dollars, a keyboard is 20, plus 20 more for a mouse. add 60 for a broadband adapter and you have a pretty well rounded game console. also, in the coming months, dreamcast stuff will start appearing in funcoland`s and the like and stuff will be cheaper.
also, there are tons of cool stuff like nester dc or a vcd player, a divx player, and tons of other stuff including linuxdc
i`m looking for a hack for adding other controllers such as an old nintendo controller to play on dreamcast.
xavii aka bobbefore moding me down, read the post...
The CPU is that smaller IBM chip, everithing else is done by the ATI chip.
Well, we know the CPU is a PowerPC derivative, and we know linux kernel have some support for ATI video cards.
I just want to know what kind of proprietary stuff or changes ATI and IBM introduced to make things harder for linux hackers...
Sony already have an official version of our beloved system for PS2, there's a version of linux for the Dreamcast too...
I hope someone (Nintendo, maybe???) puts togheter a distro for the GameCube too. It's a shame wasting all this hardware just for games.
BTW, the guy who gutted his Cube just lost the warranty...
What ? Me, worry ?
Hong Kong game store Lik-Sang had pics of a dissasembled gamecube quite a while ago, Sep 12 to be exact.
They have a bunch of other interesting news, such as the portable screen making the gamecube if not exactly portable, at least luggable.
From the article: "Nintendo stuffed everything possible into as few chips as they could"
I'm not an emulator guru, but from what I do know, the fewer chips, the easier a system is to write an emulator for! Of course, if those chips are highly complex (as they probably are), then it's still hard but probably not quite as difficult. Is it possible Nintendo have finally succumbed to emulation and have thought about the possibility of themselves writing a GameCube emulator for PC?
If you've ever seen the GameCube in person the first thing you probably thought was "Wow it's small!" Well I noticed a few things that contributed to how they made it that size. One was the power source. It's external so it resides in the AC adapter. This thing is fairly large for a console adapter. Here is a picture:Cube IGN.
The second is the processor. IBM has developed a VERY tiny 485Mhz processor for the Cube. It's called the Gekko and is based on PowerPC technology (uses copper wire tech as well). Have a look at it: GameSpot Dossier.
The GameCube hardware is unique. The chip is produced by ATI although it was designed by another company (hence, it is not a Radeon). It also features 1T-SRAM developed by MoSys. It's more efficient although not necessarily all that much better than the RAM used in the Xbox. Unfortunately only 24mb out of 40mb of the RAM in the Cube is 1T-SRAM.
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
look! http://image.lik-sang.com/content/gc/gcopen16_l.jp g bottom mid.
A month ago a number of sites indicated that when they gutted their GameCubes they found two switches near the position of the region switch that was seen on demonstration machines at shows like SpaceWorld and E3. It was hypothesised that by pushing different switches (I think they were pushed by lugs on the disc door?) you could choose which region of software the machine would accept. It was proved that Japanese software only worked in one of the four possible switch combinations.
A week or so ago it was reported that some of the mainstream game review sites now had final US region discs. Ever since I have been waiting to see if anyone is able to prove or disprove the hypothesis. If it is right, I (and many others) would cancel our orders for an import US machine, and get a Japanese one right now. Ultimately I will be buying US region software, and possibly the odd European title - how I long for the machine to have an easy multi-region hack!
Has anyone heard any further news on this stuff?